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Newer refrigerant and designs for air source heat pumps are a lot more cold weather capable than many people think. Quite a few installations are more efficient
by theluketaylor 4y ago
Newer refrigerant and designs for air source heat pumps are a lot more cold weather capable than many people think. Quite a few installations are more efficient than resistive heating down to around -13 F / -25 C and don't need a defrost cycle.
Plenty of places get or stay colder than -25C, but that is often short stretches or overnight. There are a lot of places that would do better with a little resistive heat backup compared to the huge installation costs for ground source.
New neighbourhoods in cold climates should be required to install community ground source heat pumps. Since all that dirt is moving anyway the cost of trenching is negligible and any drilling is amortized over many properties.
- hasmanean 4y agoAll utilities will be much cheaper if they are amortized over many properties. Heat pump capital costs are too high. They should be standardized or designed to be cheap and used everywhere…to recover waste heat from everywhere in the home.
- theluketaylor 4y agoAir source heat pumps don't cost significantly differently from gas furnaces or boilers, especially once you account for running costs. Anyone with A/C already has an air source heat pump, just one that only moves heat from inside the house to outside. Moving heat in both directions take some extra valves and an extra heat exchanger, but this doesn't dramatically increase costs. The basic principal and components are exactly the same. Ground source is expensive, but that's due to drilling and/or trenching. The actual heat pump is a tiny fraction of the bill to install ground source heating.